In All Countries, 1934

Dos Passos publishes a travel volume, In All Countries. The book includes impressions of political movements in the Soviet Union, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. Perhaps most thought-provoking are his travels in Russia, where he listens acutely to the street talk and deconstructs every whisper for political ramifications.

“Walking round Leningrad,” Dos Passos writes, “I have all the time the feeling that I’m walking around in the burntout crater of a volcano…No town can make so much history as has been made by the city of Peter and Lenin and not wear itself out, I suppose. Still I kept wishing I’d been there eleven years before. When Kittin and I took the sleeper to Moscow it was once again like going to bed to wake up a few years forward in the future.”